If we're using Trek as the analogy, then to me the EU is little different from Trek literature: a grab-bag of individual stories that don't matter to anything else but themselves. The EU/Legends isn't canon and never was. To try to pretend otherwise is an exercise in futility because most of it doesn't even work with the movies, let alone each other.
I tend to approach the whole "canon" thing as all of the books, comics, and games being "canon" to each other, but not necessarily to the shows and movies.
I like that approach. I don't think the EU authors necessarily feel obliged to follow each other,, but they're aware of most of the other writings and use elements that work. The result is a kind of ecosystem of stories and ideas they all draw from.
Essentially did do until televised modern Trek was revived. And then the novels ended on a note that feeds nicely into the main canon as is. So in a way, it still works. Or works enough in my eyes.
I figured someone would mention this tidbit by now, but The Book of Boba Fett can now claim it features an Oscar winner since Troy Kotsur played a Tusken Raider.
The Disney Gallery episode for Book of Boba Fett was released today. Only an hour, but a bunch of cool stuff in there.
So for all the hue and cry that went up about Luke being an AI construct replacing Mark Hamill, it seemed to involve an awful lot of Mark Hamill being on set, in costume, having character and performance centric discussions with the director . . . Side note: how damn fast does that man's beard grow?! He's clean shaven for the Luke scenes, then full bearded again by the time they get to interviewing him for the talking head stuff. I realise it was probably months apart, but it's just so weird cutting back and forth between the two! One thing I noticed they didn't really cover in the doc was the slow motion bike chase. I think they know they boobed on that one, sadly. My main takeaway from this is just to be reminded how awesome the female Tusken warrior was and how annoyed I am that they killed her off-screen. Indeed, I'm so annoyed that I've decided that she's not dead; she put up such a fight that the Pykes stunned her, dragged her off and sold her to some gladiatorial fighting pit, and that's where we're going to see her next . . . somewhere. That's why there was no body, just her gaderffii left in the sand. The one that jumped out at me is that Dave used Plo to hide Luke's involvement . . . again! Why do I get the feeling this is all an elaborate way to actually get Plo back, because the next time that name shows up in a script people are going to be "oh, he's just using Luke again" . . . and then a bloke in a Kel Dor costume wanders onto set.
That was great. I had forgotten or didn't know that Lucas came up with Cad Bane. I have a ton of respect for what Temuera Morrison brought to the character, especially the fight scenes. He comes across as an accomplished martial artist in his own right. I actually had a conversation today with someone who watched Boba Fett recently and they absolutely loved it and what they did with the character. They thought Boba was so cool and they liked his more non violent approach along with his relationship with Fennec Shand. This and the gallery episode makes me want to do a binge on this series someday.
It was canon before Disney took over, that's why they had to decanonize it in the first place. People always insist that Star Wars was just like Trek in this regard, but it wasn't. Not everything follows Star Trek rules, just like time travel has no obligation to be governed by Back to the Future.
The lucasfilm "tiered canon" model was just a (very successful) marketing tool designed to convince consumers that the lower-tier canon stories were more important than they actually were. Basically, they would take the things that they liked and add them to the "A" tier, but would happily disregard anything they didn't like. In other words, it wasn't canon to begin with. Just ask Karen Travers. The only Star Wars material that was ever truly canon, the "A" tier, was the stuff that remained canon after the Disney purchase. "Canon until contradicted" is just another way of saying "not canon".
Lucas couldn't care less about the novels, save for the occasional idea that he liked. Other than that, yeah the novels were sold as being way more important than they really are. Which is marketing genius right there, but had zero to do with where the story was going to go.
Well, he cared enough about Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker to have himself named the "author."
Yes and no. I mean I agree with the general sentiment, but the system was first and foremost and internal organizing tool for the licencing division to at least try and keep things straight, and basically auto-resolve any *minor* continuity conflicts without having to have someone make a judgement call each and every time. To my way of thinking, the mistake was in making it public (with the best of intentions, I'm sure) since it gave a certain type of fan the impression that it was an iron clad way to make everything one cohesive, self-retconning canon. (Spoiler: it was not.) And as a bonus it enabled a certain type of gatekeeping, with is never healthy for a fandom. There's a reason why the mid-2000's were about when I stopped keeping up with Star Wars publishing and it was *not* because of the prequels. I think mostly he just liked some of the artwork, mostly from the comic side of things. It's why Aayla Secura wound up in AotC, why Vos got a name drop (and was considered for a cameo) in RotS. I seriously doubt he ever read a single EU book. You mean the damn near verbatim adaptation various drafts of the script he wrote? And then he did it again with 'Splinter of the Minds Eye', oh no wait, Foster got author credit on that one because he actually had a direct hand in it! Let's get real for just a second: novelizations (like autobiographies) are first and foremost a marketing tool, as such ghost-writing is hardly anything notable (also like autobiographies.) So yeah Lucas's name was on the cover, because it was his movie (that he wrote and directed) it was supposed to be promoting.
Some kid did a youtube deepfake of the Luke scenes in M2. Then ILM hired him to do the Luke deepfakes in BoBF